LETTERING + GRAPHIC
DESIGN LEARNING
Father’s Day is just a little over 2 weeks away! If you’d like to go DIY this year or get yours in the snail mail early, this week’s freebie is a Father’s Day card printable. The download includes a pdf with print instructions, trim + score marks all included. The final, trimmed size is 4″x6″ (vertical) which can fit perfectly in any A4 sized envelope. Extra preview image and download link below!
To finish up Photoshop month, this week I wanted to share one of my favorite ways to work with watercolors in Photoshop – turning them into seamless texture patterns! If you’ve taken my Watercolor Textures for Graphic Design class over on Skillshare, this week’s tutorial will be a refresher for you, but I’m also sharing how to take the pattern you create and convert it into an Illustrator pattern swatch (check out around 8:20 for that), so there’s something new for everyone 🙂 My newest watercolor texture kit (vol. 3) just went live today, so I’m excited to share textures from the new kit throughout the video – these are my most detailed and colorful ones to date! Click below to get yo’ pattern on!
Happy June next week! May usually feels like such a long month, but this one went a little quicker than usual with all of the planning and prep for my newest Skillshare class, Intro to iPad Lettering (launching June 6th!), as well as a few new digital goodies in the Every-Tuesday shop. I’m also finishing up my next hand drawn script font (SO excited for this one!) which will be available mid-June 🙂
In case your desktop is needing a little freshening up for the month ahead, this week’s freebie is a set of two June desktop wallpapers, with and without dates in two common sizes, 1920 x 1080 + 1280 x 1024. Previews and download link below!
I’m so excited to announce that my newest class, Intro to Photoshop in partnership with Brit + Co, is officially available! If you’ve ever wanted to learn Photoshop but felt intimidated, weren’t sure where to start, or just couldn’t find a class that taught more than the interface, this class was made just for you 🙂
We cover all of the basics to give you the confidence to begin editing and enhancing photos on your own, and if you’d like to incorporate some design elements, we go over that, too. This is an online class that you can watch at your own pace (stop, pause, play) whenever it’s convenient for you. We go step by step to create this instagram post together (or use for any purpose you’d like!) in quick and easy, digestible steps.. steps that you’ll be able to repeat on your own for any project of yours in the future.
Welcome to Photoshop month! Because Photoshop plays such a large role in taking my designs further, this month I’m sharing some of the tools and tricks I use all the time in Photoshop. This month is specifically in celebration of my new Intro to Photoshop class with Brit + Co which launches tomorrow (today’s the last day to sign up and get 15% off using this link!). In the class, we create this outcome, which uses watercolor textures and lettering, so today I wanted to share some quick tips on adjusting watercolor textures for your specific needs.
I’ve been asked quite a bit lately how to change any watercolor texture to a specific color, so I think this tutorial was meant to be! Say you want to incorporate a custom watercolor texture into your branding – you love the texture, but it’s not the right color for your brand. Or, you just want it to be something else. In this week’s video, I walk you through three methods using Photoshop: changing all of the colors within the watercolor to something different, changing the entire watercolor into one specific color (which is great for branding), and changing just a portion of the watercolor to a different, specific color. All the tips in the video below!
My newest Skillshare class, Watercolor Textures for Graphic Design, went live on Monday, and I’m so excited to share that nearly 1,000 wonderful creatives have already enrolled in the class! Creating watercolor textures from scratch – the act of sitting with a brush in hand, swirling colors together in unique ways – is one of my favorite times to relax and kind of let the art be made without thinking too hard. It’s definitely easy to lose track of time once you get started, but also awesome to then have so many cool new textures to work with. If you’re ever short on ideas on how you can start using those newly created textures, today I’m rounding up a bunch of inspiration with ways to start applying your watercolor textures in graphic design. Read on to see them all!
Happy Tuesday! This week I’m excited to announce my newest Skillshare class, Watercolor Textures for Graphic Design. If you’ve ever wondered how watercolor textures like this and this are created, color enhanced and removed from their backgrounds, this class covers it all! We even finish the class creating seamless, repeatable watercolor texture patterns you’ll be able to apply to any of your Photoshop designs in just a couple of clicks 🙂 As a special gift to blog readers and youtube subscribers, this week I’m sharing the class trailer, as well as one of the videos from the class you wouldn’t otherwise get to see without enrolling. If you’ve never tried Skillshare before, you can watch the full class for free (and any other Skillshare classes for an entire month) using this link. Hope to see you in the class!
There’s nothing quite like receiving a beautifully hand addressed snail mailed card, note or correspondence. There’s also nothing quite like creating that very same mailbox surprise for someone else.
I looooove hand addressing envelopes in all kinds of different styles (suited for the person and the occasion, of course). It’s one of my most favorite things to letter and I can’t believe I haven’t created any video on it yet! That’s all about to change this week and next week with a two part envelope address lettering series! We’ll start this week with sophisticated lettering for more formal notes (for delivery to traditional folks or for classy occasions) and we’ll cover playful and whimsical lettering next week (reserved for the hippest of family, friends and events). All of the materials mentioned + links included below!
One of the changes I’m happiest I made last year was finally joining the amazing people on Instagram (I know, superrrr late to the party). I had created an account a couple of years before, but I had been so focused on creating tutorials and getting the blog to a good place that sticking to regular Instagram postings seemed too overwhelming at the time.
Last year, I felt like I had finally hit a rhythm and I’m so glad that I decided to add Instagram into my weekly mix. I am literally amazed every single day by incredible artists creating and posting breathtaking art (cue guilt on party lateness). I love the camaraderie, the new insta-friends I’ve made and the ability to connect with people/artists/designers who are passionate about the same things. In honor of them, I wanted to start a new monthly/bi-monthly post where I share some instagrammers who I deeply admire and who I think you’ll also love. Welcome to post #1 where I’m sharing my first 5 (of many, many, many) InstaLoves.
Happy Wednesday! Hope your weeks have started off well! I just wanted to post a little notice that I've partnered with Skillshare to offer a waterbrush lettering workshop from November 30th through December 11th. Yep. For
Happy Tuesday! As we approach Thanksgiving month, I thought Katherine’s request for a tutorial on feathers in Illustrator was a great idea this week. Since no style was specified in her request, I decided to share how to replicate two styles I love – organic and geometric/iconic. We’ll go over a bunch of quick tips, like easily altering paths, applying clipping masks, expanding strokes and utilizing the pathfinder palette. At the end of this tutorial, you’ll have an organic and geometric/iconic style feather you’ll be able to apply any color or texture to, alter easily, and implement to any application in both CMYK and RGB. Read on to see how!
Things have been all about watercolor typography lately – and having the versatility to create such specific detail with a waterbrush, I started to wonder – what else can I create fine detail in with a waterbrush? I am self admittedly not an illustrator – or painter for that matter. I’m a designer that has always loved to also doodle and create things with my hands. When I was young, I’d ask for an ‘art kit’ from the craft store every Christmas and birthday and I’m grateful my parents always found a way to deliver. I could doodle some legit cartoon characters (following an 8th grade standard), but realism or the patience to carry out long form artwork has always been MIA in my gifts department.
I’ve always had a passion for logic + mathematics (totally weird, I know – almost became a math teacher, but that’s another story). I think it’s probably the geometry of it all, but I am a complete sucker for textiles. Anyway, the idea of putting patterns and watercolors together prompted a pinterest hunt, which brought about this post today. If you like watercolors + patterns, this is some serious kind of eye candy. I had to make this post have a theme or I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself from posting every beautiful piece of artwork I came across. So! Here are 10 dreamy watercolor patterns to go extra swoon-mode over 🙂 Happy Thursday!
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